Kristine's 2017 Diary

[AZ1908]

Hi Kristine,

How are you going? Have you started refeed yet?

[Kristine..]

Dear Diary

Monday 17th July
Day 168: Week 24 Completed
Start: 87.70. Today: 64.00 Kilo. Loss to Date: 23.7 kilo


ON RE-FEED!
WAS Size 16 - 18 (ish) NOW Size 10 (ish) - 12

The Journey Continues !!!

Between 10th and 17th I lost no weight, settling in at 64.0 kilos.

My diligent Consultant urged me to start Re-Feed as soon as possible. She was concerned that stringing it out might create problems for me so I accepted her advice and started Re-Feed on Friday 14th.

So, that's me done!

However, she was surprised that most unusually, I have bread included from Day 1 and, as it turns out, as of yesterday I am now eating 5 fruits each day ... anyone who thinks that the Cohen's program is just churned out the same for everyone should have a look at my Re-Feed!

Gardenvale Clinic have provided me with lots of Cheat Sheets for Re-Feed to make the adjustments easier to calculate.

Anyway, the weight loss has been stopped in it's tracks and all of a sudden I feel as if I have come to the end of a long journey. I am tired, I am sleepy, I feel as if I have come home.

I have enjoyed every mouthful over the past (nearly) six months and the program has been no trouble at all. I don't think I will give up my oh-so-easy chicken/spinach/cauliflower curry soup, it is a joy to take my Thermos of hot soup to work, but it felt like I was cheating when I ate soup this evening with rye bread croutons shaken in to it!

Thanks, AZ and annagirl, for looking in! My experiences with Cohen's 2017 has had such a mellow feel to it. My life was a whole lot busier when I did Cohen's 2006 but the end result is the same:

Empowerment, earned by me, for me, the ability to change my weight, change my shape, change my life.

The people I work with now are surprised that I have lost 24 kilo since my interview for the job. The can't remember what I looked like back then, all they see is me, now.

The opportunity to reinvent ourselves is precious and this Program allows us that opportunity.

From 2006 to 2008 I held my end weight with no trouble at all. I was very proud of my slim figure and I clearly remembered what it felt like to be obese, to feel ashamed of myself.

This time, in 2017, it is yet early days and I am still seeing an obese person in the mirror. The 'amputee syndrome' takes a while for the brain and the conception of self to adjust to the new reality.

I think that next week I will go shopping. When I buy at least a few new things in the smaller size the new reality will start to actually feel real.

But, next week is a week away, in the meantime, I am busy calculating how much Old Protein to add to which meal and thinking how on earth am I going to Mix Proteins!!!

Lotsa love
Kristine

[annagirl]

Hi Kristine,
What an amazing journey! Congratulations on making it to refeed.
As this is my first time on Cohens I find it so interesting to read how many people struggle with their new body and how physically you loose weight but mentally takes a while to catch up. I would say it is time to get out there and get some new clothes and rock your new size 10 bod!!
Anna xx

[AZ1908]

YAY!!! Well done Kristine! So excited for you!!!

[starry]

Kristine

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 congrats!!! Well done! 168 days is no mean feat!!! Happy for u.

[Kristine..]

Dear Diary

Monday 30th July, 2017: Weight Loss and Re-Feed Completed
Day 182: Week 26 Closed
Start Date: 30/01/2017 Start Weight: 87.70 kilo
End Date: 30/07/2017 End Weight: 63.30 Kilo.
Weight Loss: 24.4 kilo

WAS Size 16 - 18 (ish) NOW Size 10 (ish) - 12

MAINTENANCE:
Start Date: Monday 31st July, 2017
Start Weight: 63.30 kilo
Today's Weight: 62.50 kilo (12/08/2017)
Total Loss Overall: 25.20 kilo
Personal Goal Weight Achieved: 62.50 kg
The Journey Continues !!!

Relieved though I am that this particular part of the Journey is complete, I know that adjusting to life as a slim person at the Ideal Weight is not going to be all that easy.

I don't mean that I expect it to be hard, just that Life In The Wild, with no fences, is and can be, challenging.

I have enjoyed the Program, the discipline of weighing and measuring. If it's not on the List, I didn't even consider it. Too easy.

But now, my life is filled with questions.

Can I eat this? Do I want to eat that? How much of this is appropriate?

Since completing Re-Feed and the official Hand Over at the end of the Program, despite eating a variety of foods (including a store bought Fish n Chips dinner), I have lost nearly another kilo. I expect to keep shrinking for at least six months to a year. As time goes by, clothes will fit better and I have a few months to gradually get my upper arms toned and ready for sleeveless summer tops

It is lovely to be walking with my knees tapping each other in the rhythm of the stride, my hips rotating effortlessly, my feet walking the invisible line.

I feel completely rejuvenated and look and feel at least ten years younger. What a relief to no longer have to wear sack cloth and ashes! No more apologies from me, just a confident woman out to challenge the world!

When I was washing my hands the other day, one of my little rings slipped off into the basin, even my fingers are slimmer.

But oh! Losing this weight brings new meaning to 'being down to the bones of your bum' - all chairs are now just so uncomfortable! I knew I was going to lose even the padding on my buttocks and prepared for this by buying an invalid / wheelchair cushion via eBay early in the year so that I would be able to sit at my own computer with relative comfort and not end up with pressure points.

It is easy to forget that while overall size diminishes, clothing sizes change, foot wear sizes change, and the comfort padding of the body simply disappears!

And with Cohen's, it all happens so fast it can take a while to catch up with our own reality!

So even though I am now post-Program, I am going to take it slow and steady. I want to make sure that there is no rebound. I am going to keep loosely to the program for a while yet, but increase the food to the recommended protein / vegetable / fruit / carbohydrate / bread amounts

eg one of my Program treat meals was pizza (Salada / mozzarella / spinach / mushroom / tomato / capsicum) grilled in a small cast iron frypan in our little benchtop Mini Bake n Grill.

Now, I am making this with a half pita bread, topped with all of the above plus an egg cracked into the spinach nest. Gasp! Carbohydrate! Mixed proteins! Who would have thought! But OMG this is just yummy and fragrant and delicious and who would want for more? (and yes, no more than three times a week for cheese, that's enough!)

Easy does it. Baby steps, small changes, small increases, but keeping up with the water, recording weight every day and I shall continue to measure every so often.

Thanks to everyone who has looked in and cheered me on. I have approached 2017 Cohen's somewhat differently to 2006 Cohen's and I expect to be able to maintain at least as well as I did through to 2008 (GFC) and then through to 2011 but this time, although life is always full of surprises, I doubt that I would take up smoking again so there won't be any giving up smoking, either ... which is what really finished me off in 2011 and the weight just crept back on after that.

But I think the main change is the way we think, our relationship with ourselves and our relationship with food overall.

It seems to me that we can do some very simple stuff to make it a whole lot easier for ourselves:

• Have a meal plan
• Shop for the meal plan
• Take appropriate food to work rather than buy on the run or not eat at all
• Don't have unnecessary food in the house
• Don't have confectionery or other snack foods in the house.
• Be confident that our slim self, and not our fat self, is now the default position and that our slim self will be reliable and worth investing in.

We were worth spending this money on, taking this trouble for, weighing and measuring every single bite of food for weeks, months, persevering and losing this weight.

Yesterday, Today and certainly Tomorrow, we must remember the simple truth: We are absolutely worth it!!!

Lotsa love
Kristine

[Kohinoor]

Hi Kristine,

Wow !! Every time I read your thoughts, I get a smile on my face. I think it is the unstoppable, indomitable, no-nonsense, dependable way you think about everything.

Your expression of your thoughts is also just so clear and, yes, determined. In all, you were the right one to be the NewYou catalyst way back when. Your first journey was the beacon that had so many others emulate you.

In short, my dear, you are a STAR !!!


And how good was this?

despite eating a variety of foods (including a store bought Fish n Chips dinner), I have lost nearly another kilo.

Like you, I have also chucked the dreaded cigarettes. Wife and I have been "clean" over 2 and a half years now. What a difference it makes to the balance of payments as well as to our overall health. I don't think there is anything that would call me back to smoking now.

I hope you are also "at peace" with that dreaded weed. If so, then I'm sure that it will allow you to focus on staying slight and sprightly forever.

Go you, K. And thanks on behalf of those hundreds who have been the beneficiaries of your example and your words in here. Those particular gems of yours will be here even once you and I are gone, still leading hopeful Cohenites through the EP, refeed and maintenance minefield. I do hope you stick around Kristine. NewYou needs examples and promoters and encouragers still - why not you? Oh, and Mods too !! And more gems !!! We need all of them - please stay around....

Hugs,
Koh

[Kristine..]

Actually Koh

Your reply deserves more than just a tick from me:

A little while ago I read through the original Somersoft Weight Loss Diary.

How long ago and far away was that? Somersoft Land was almost a Camelot, a Utopian place in cyberspace where the sun perpetually shone and the future could not have been rosier!!

You may recall, however, that I met with some not insignificant criticism for that Diary, particularly from the Exercise Or Die Brigade.

Not that the frenetic exercising seemed to do any of them much good, but that's another story.

I am confident that if Cohen's had required EXERCISE that quite a few people- who went on to lose amazing amounts of weight - would simply have not bothered.

But that EXERCISE (of the hurtling about / running up sand dunes - pumping iron at the gym, variety) was forbidden, allowed many seriously obese people to at least consider the Cohen's program

Sure, walk the dog but don't take up marathon running until you have safely finished the Weight Loss AND the Re-Feed.

My 2006 Consultant said to me that I would probably start to feel more energetic and feel like taking up exercise. She said, when the feeling comes, to lie down and take a nap and when I wake up, the feeling will have gone away.

NO EXERCISE. What a tough call!

And, unbelievably, No Exercise is exactly what the Doctor ordered!

But I digress.

We have known each other a while now, Koh, and we seem to each have a mission in life to encourage other people. Our styles differ but our intentions are the same. We row the same boat.

I am glad that we have walked together these past few months and the Forum is certainly a bigger place for having you in it. Your support and assurance for new comers and seasoned hands alike, never wavers.

So I thank you, Koh, and I hope that we continue to row the boat, together, for a another while yet.

Lotsa love
Kristine

[Kohinoor]

I hope that we continue to row the boat, together, for another while yet.

Yippeeee !!!

(She said "Yes!")

[Andy46]

So glad for you ...I also have been back into it after slowly but very knowingly blow out to 140 .....since 2007 ....but now back to 110 since ANZAC day. I actually went to the doctor who looked at me and in simple terms said: "You're going to die".
Came home ...sulked and that was it ....started and haven't looked back.
So with you all the way

regards
Andy

[Kohinoor]

Hi Andy,

Good for you - are you going to start a new diary? Is this a New plan, or the ol' faithful? Good loss in 4 months ol' mate.

Koh

[Kristine..]

Dear Diary

Monday 30th July, 2017: Day 182: Week 26 Closed - Weight Loss and Re-Feed Completed
Start Date: 30/01/2017 Start Weight: 87.70 kilo
End Date: 30/07/2017 End Weight: 63.30 Kilo.
Weight Loss: 24.4 kilo

WAS Size 16 - 18 (ish) NOW Size 10 (ish) - 12

MAINTENANCE:
Start Date: Monday 31st July, 2017 - Start Weight: 63.30 kilo
Today's Date: Thursday 31st August, 2017 - Weight: 63.90 kilo

Four weeks of Maintenance, and wobbling about reasonably well on the scales.

In this period, the weight has been down to 62.5 kilo and up to 64.1 kilo.

I am experimenting with what I can eat / drink and still writing up the Daily Food Diary.

I am making sure that I have at least 3 pieces of Program Fruit each day, with another 2 serves of other fruit after dinner, maybe frozen cherries or berries with my usual orange or a fresh pear or some melon.

In times past, I have stopped eating fruit as soon as I hit Maintenance. The only time I eat fruit on a regular basis is while I am on Cohen's. As soon as I hit Maintenance, it's as if I don't recognise fruit as a food group!

But that doesn't mean I stop prowling around the kitchen after dinner, so I am making a deliberate effort to keep up the Lifestyle Change and to continue the pattern of buying fresh fruit and eating multiple serves each day.

The Five Hour Rule / Last Bite / First Bite is one of the strengths of the Program

To be able to eat Meal 3 at a reasonable time of day, and Meal 2 at the appropriate interval, we have to eat Meal 1 as early as possible.

Oh how easy it is to back slide and to dawdle about, not eating breakfast until nearly lunch time, so instead of eating 12 hours on / 12 hours off - and letting our bodies do their digestive / metabolic / Human Growth Hormone thing in a fasting state while we sleep, we start missing meals, cramming in bought processed food on the run, eating a jumble of things and eating far too late in the day.

I took a keen interest in my Lunch Room Survey, observing who ate what, and it didn't take much to see that the slim people were organised eaters, bringing appropriate food from home, and the overweight people ate on the fly, rushing to the Greasy Spoon for whatever was hot (usually fat / sugar / carbohydrate rich foods), only having time to gobble down half of it, lots of food (& money) waste, poor nutrition, constant hunger, ballooning weight.

I so enjoyed my chicken & cauliflower soup, fresh and hot in my dinky little Thermos with crispbread and apple in my Bait Box, and the soup soothed me, settled me, yet energised me at the same time.

I am determined to not go back to making food decisions while standing there with the fridge door open

But oh! The time it takes to rough out a menu, plan a shopping list, prepare and eat those meals!!! I know I will get better with practice but right now I am overwhelmed at how long it all takes. Mike has done all the shopping and cooking for the family for years, but has stood aside while I have done my own Cooking for Cohen's, and right now he is off pruning, so I am doing the Woollies Run, the cooking as well as the eating, it truly is a job in itself and this is for one person only!

So, Gentle Reader, my Maintenance Report Month One is:
Fair Weather, a gentle swell with a light wind, travelling well with the usual vigilance, taking nothing for granted and checking and logging as I go

So far, so good!

Lotsa love
Kristine

[annagirl]

Great job Kirstine, looks like you are working this maintenance gig!
I longggg to be there too!

Anna xxx